Group work. What shall we think of it? Walk down a school hallway any day and I bet you will see multiple classrooms attempting one or more components of group work. Some children thrive in group work and others are immediately lost in their group assignment. Some teachers are masters at using group assignments to provide them with time for individual student and group tutorials and other teachers view group work assignments as extended prep time. So, what shall we think of it? A child’s ability to work productively in a collaborative group is an essential learning opportunity. So, we need to apply group work properly or not use group work at all!
Let’s understand the sixth sentence first. An effective use of group work is an essential teacher tool for creating time for individual or small group tutorials. Without good tutorial time, few teachers are able to monitor student learning and do the necessary reteaching needed to assure that all students are successful. So, what are appropriate group work practices.
The Partnership for 21st Century Skills tells us that the ability to work with others is an essential and necessary component for a person to succeed in this century’s world of work. http://www.p21.org/overview/skills-framework Specifically, to be 21st century-ready, children need to:
- Demonstrate ability to work effectively and respectfully with diverse teams,
- Exercise flexibility and willingness to be helpful in making necessary compromises to accomplish a common goal, and
- Assume shared responsibility for collaborative work, and value the individual contributions made by each team member.
Let’s start with these as the educational target.
These are several components of a strong instructional design using group work.
- Group work is face-to-face work. Children need to see each other up close, share ideas with one another, discuss with and explain to each other, summarize what each other has contributed, and create a consensus together. “With one another” cannot be accomplished from opposite sides of the classroom or virtually. It is best when children are “knee to knee” at a group table or circle of chairs or desks.
- Group work requires each child to do work. Too often group work has been accomplished by the one or two “go get ‘em” children in a group while others are cheerleaders or observers. As best practice, each child must do the initial work (reading, viewing, doing) and generate a conclusion from their initial work (written, spoken, shown). Each child must explain their initial work to the group and find similarities and differences in their collective initial work. Each child doing the initial work is the first separator between good and bad learning practice. If only some children do the initial work, the use of collaborative groups automatically is poor practice.
- Group work requires appropriate social skills. Children need to take turns speaking and doing, listening and watching, and sharing their ideas. They need to respect the ideas of other children. Social skills do not arise by accident. While we encourage a competitive attitude in many school activities, we need to have children check their competitiveness and open themselves to cooperation and collaboration. This is an instructional target unto itself in which the teacher explains and demonstrates the active, receptive, and collaborative skills that build group collaboration.
- Group work may apply structural roles of leader/facilitator, recorder/secretary, checker, timekeeper, summarizer/reflector. Once again, the importance of these roles creates its own teaching moment because a child needs a strong image of how these roles contribute to the group’s effectiveness. http://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/cooperative/roles.htGroups must be heterogeneously assigned. Ability grouping condemns a group of high ability children to a competitive race and a group of low ability children to a dearth of ideas. 1 – 4 above contribute to the success of each student regardless of their ability. Too often, proponents of gifted and talented ideology demand that high ability students work only with high ability children. There is time and place for ability grouping, but not in the design of collaborative group instruction. Resist these demands.
- Group work allows the teacher to monitor and assess each student’s initial work, demonstration of social skills, skill in expressing a group role, skill in collaborating for consensus, and ability to work with children of differing abilities. Good practice includes an assessment rubric on each of these points.
Group work is not a group project in which one or two students do all the work or an assignment that leads to all members getting the same grade based upon the final submission. When either of these is present, children are not afforded a good instructional opportunity.
Group work is hard work for a teacher. It requires a strong conceptualization of complex learning targets, discreet instruction of skills and understandings that are embedded in a child’s cooperation and collaboration, and a complex assessment scheme. And, this is just the preparation for group work. Inside the time that children are working in groups, a teacher also needs to plan for and implement individual and small group tutorials.
The next time someone walks past your classroom door and looks in to see group work, show them that your children are actively learning and using strong 21st century collaboration skills. Your good group work instructional practices also will be displayed by the overall academic success of all your children at the end of the year because you combined group work and tutorial instruction to the advantage of all.